Trump Lashes Out At ‘Little Rocket Man’: ‘Save Your Energy Rex’, We’ll ‘Do What Has To Be Done’

This morning, the President kicked off Sunday by calling unidentified Puerto Ricans “politically motivated ingrates,” a small (by his standards) escalation from Saturday’s tirade during which Trump posited a Democratic conspiracy involving San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz before essentially suggesting that Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery effort would be moving along a lot faster if Puerto Ricans weren’t lazy.

It’s the weekend, which means Trump has all kinds of time on his hands to craft policy in 140 characters (amusingly, it seems like Twitter has not extended an invitation to Trump to participate in the 280 character trial run) and lash out at a list of enemies that, in addition to lazy Puerto Ricans, now includes Steph Curry and the NFL.

So it comes as no surprise that “Rocket Man” made an appearance in the President’s increasingly unhinged Twitter feed.

Now one thing you should note here is that Trump’s top advisors have been at pains to prevent him from accidentally starting a nuclear war. It was just last week when the LA Times reported that “senior aides to the President repeatedly warned him not to deliver a personal attack on North Korea’s leader at the United Nations, saying insulting the young despot in such a prominent venue could irreparably escalate tensions and shut off any chance for negotiations to defuse the nuclear crisis.”

Not only did Trump not heed that warning, he appears to have deviated from a speech that was vetted just hours earlier. “Trump’s derisive description of Kim Jong Un as ‘Rocket Man on a suicide mission’ and his threat to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea were not in a speech draft that several senior officials reviewed and vetted Monday, the day before Trump gave his first address to the U.N. General Assembly,” the Times went on to report.

Just six days later (so, last Sunday), Trump said in a tweet that North Korea “won’t be around much longer,” prompting an incredulous response the following day from North Korea’s top diplomat who, at an ad hoc presser in New York, accused the President of “declaring war.”

That brings us to this morning.

Just one day after after Rex Tillerson told reporters in Beijing that the U.S. is in direct contact with Pyongyang via “a couple, three channels” potentially opening the door for a peaceful resolution, Trump not only lashed out at Kim with the same derisive nickname, he even went so far as to directly reference Tillerson’s remarks. Here, look:

Forgive me, but it almost seems like he wants this to escalate. That is: why would you say that? And even if we want to go ahead and accept that another “Little Rocket Man” tweet was inevitable, why in God’s name would you directly reference Tillerson’s apparent efforts to negotiate, in the process leaving no doubt about what it is you’re referring to?

4 thoughts on “Trump Lashes Out At ‘Little Rocket Man’: ‘Save Your Energy Rex’, We’ll ‘Do What Has To Be Done’”

It is typical of failed Presidents (both Democrat and especially Republican Presidents) to involve the US in wars to unite the American people under them. Historically and arguably – it has always worked. You can expect Trump to continue to goad KJU and others to create distractions.

This is the failed Trump administrations last ditch efforts to first distract the country and the Congress from their on going criminal investigations of Trump an his wayward, likely treasonous, and incompetent Administration. Second Trump will use a N. Korean (and or Iran, or who knows – maybe even Puerto Rico) war(s) to shore up and or broaden his ever shrinking base for 2018 and 2020 elections.

A war with N. Korea (apparently the US’s – ME wars no longer have sufficient voter sensitivity to be an effective distraction) would pretty much assure Trump that Congress would neither impeach or more likely – remove him from office due to his continual self-demonstrated mental incompetency. Congress would likely shut down the Mueller investigation. All in all, this would be the typical strategy and one where the Presidents failures have always been at the expense of and foisted on – the US tax payer.

yes, usually lobbing some tomahawks props up the president or distracts the populace. currently though if he really made moves to engage militarily, i think he would be immediately removed from office. nk does do terrorism like the faceless m.e. entities. theres enough deep state people including some generals who ‘know better’ than to actually engage in a nuclear exchange, thus he would be promptly removed, or fall ill or some other means.

DMD- you are right on the money here. Trump needs to keep this and others in his pocket in case things get really bad for him. The Iran deal, the Israeli response by his pal “psycho Netanyahu”, Isis, Syria all flash points to use when the real Russia pressure gets closer and it will.

Writing about a subject is the best
way to educate yourself about it, and when I flick through past work I remember how much
they taught me, if no one else. Mainly they taught me that I didn’t know very much. But they
also taught me that most other people didn’t know much either. Thus, some key themes
which stand out include the illusory control of policy makers, the presumed knowledge of
those looking to them to actively do good, the ease with which we fool ourselves, and how
best to protect capital in the face of such unavoidable uncertainty. -- Dylan Grice